


Korrlok Week (Spring '13) Day 1: Drug

by masksarehot



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:57:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masksarehot/pseuds/masksarehot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an interrogation room at the Republic City prison, what starts as a routine visit takes an unexpected turn as Tarrlok and Korra stumble upon a new level of intimacy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Korrlok Week (Spring '13) Day 1: Drug

**Author's Note:**

> There are no literal drugs in this story, but it’s subtly structured around the symptoms/experiences of an opiate high (it’s subtle, but it’s sprinkled throughout), and the concept of healing.
> 
> Hope you enjoy -- thank you for reading!

Tarrlok shivers in his chair as he waits for Korra to arrive.

Usually, she comes to him in standard Water Tribe wear -- shades of blue, accents of fur, snow boots. This time, she's wearing a form-fitting green dress and heavy makeup. Her hair is down, swept off her face on one side with a gold-and-green barrette in the shape of a flower. She steps into the room, wobbling a bit on her high heels, but gives him a broad grin. He swears it gets broader every time they meet.

Tarrlok's pulse races with anticipation. He waits until the door closes behind her, then says, "You look especially radiant this evening, Avatar Korra. I trust you didn't go to all this trouble just for me?"

She locks the door behind her. As she slides to a seat on the opposite side of the table, she nervously pats her hair. "I have to go to this stupid party tonight, and Asami and the girls gave me a makeover." With a small wince, she confides, "I hate it. There's so much goop on my face that it's itchy."

"You look breathtaking." In the brightness of the interrogation lights, her pupils have constricted; Tarrlok stares into her expanded irises, enchanted by the subtle streaks and points of colour. What he has always assumed to be blue is flecked with grey, violet and gold. The colours glow in contrast with her dark skin. His gaze traces down her pert nose to her lips, glistening red, her teeth gleaming white behind them. How he wishes he could cup his palm to that beautiful face, but one hand is cuffed to the chair, and the other...

The other. He thinks about how he must look to her, especially now, so broken and dull compared to her radiance. His hair, shorn to the scalp during a lice infestation a couple years ago, has grown to shoulder length, but it's stringy and dull. He has asked, time and time again, for something to oil it with, but the guards only laugh it off, even when he tries to claim it as a cultural necessity. And while he hasn't seen his face in a mirror in about two years, he catches glimpses of himself in the shiny metal panelling of the shower room: wrinkled forehead, bruised eyes, and sunken cheeks. He doesn't understand why she keeps agreeing to meet him like this. Why would the Avatar, of all people, stand by him, when all others walked away?

His eyes bow away from her.

"Any news about my brother?" he asks.

He hears pity in her hesitation. It has been three long years, and he knows now that the answer will always be the same, but it still stings every time she says the word no. It's just as well; a 'yes' would break him, anyway. Noatak must be dead; he wouldn't abandon his little brother twice in one lifetime. He couldn't.

"None of that tonight," says Korra.

When he lifts his head, she wears a kind smile on her face as she leans across the table.

"No frowning," she says, "I came here to cheer you up, not make you feel worse."

She stands, and he feels the stress drain from his body as she paces around to his side of the table, her fingertips trailing the tabletop. His eyes lock to those fingertips, that sensual touch of skin to varnished wood. Each step is accompanied by a deliberate clack of her shoes that reverberates through him like a heartbeat. She stops; he can feel her looming over him, and even though they are a good foot or two apart, he feels her body heat soaking into his uniform. There's a faint perfume in the air, a combination of incense and cinnamon. Strong, with a surprising undertone of sweetness, just like her.

"Tarrlok," she says quietly, "look at me."

Once upon a time, he could have looked her in the eye, hiding his nervousness behind a smug smirk and an air of dignity. All his polish has been stripped away, torn from him as permanently as his bending. He looks up at her and knows he's showing her just how intimidated and vulnerable she makes him feel. Maybe that's why she keeps coming back. Maybe she, like he, is addicted to the power she has over him.

"I have a surprise for you. I learned a new trick." Her hand slides down his good arm, the movement bringing her face to hover just inches from his. Even through the thick fabric of his shirt, the pressure of her touch feels so good.

Her fingers find the handcuff. The metal slackens and falls away. She fills the stunned silence: "I finally learned to metalbend."

The enormity of her revelation starts to sink in. Oh spirits, he's finally going to be able to touch her, after so long.

His hand flies for her face with all the enthusiasm of a virgin, but he hesitates mere inches before the contact. "Your make up," he says, hiding behind the excuse.

"It's fine. I told Asami I might need some touch-ups." Her hand rises to meet his and their fingers interlace -- interlace properly, without awkwardly accommodating the odd angles of the handcuffs. She doesn't force him closer, just waits with him, supporting him. Maybe she has guessed how much this means to him, how daunting she is.

He tries, and fails, to keep the tremble from his fingers as he finally touches the face of the woman he has grown to love. It's even softer than he imagined, silky and warm, and he presses his palm against her cheek. Her eyes close in response, and her lips part with a small gasp. It's strange, he reflects, that he has felt this woman's mouth on nearly every part of his body, has suffocated himself in the warm folds between her legs, has seen her mouth split with ecstasy as she rocked in his lap, but the rush he gets from this simple, innocent contact has every hair of his body standing on end.

Disentangling his hand from hers, he traces her mouth, marvelling in the texture change from the slick, oily lipstick to the damp flesh inside. Her tongue slides across the pad of his finger, and that's another new sensation: warm, wet, and just a bit rough.

He lifts his eyes to meet hers and sees that her eyelids are low. "Spirits," he curses, because the novel sensations have drained him of any poetic grace.

"I want you to touch me everywhere," she says into his fingers.

Those words! His mind floats; warmth floods his groin. "How much time do you have?" The words come out rasping, pained.

"As much as we need." Her lips wrap around the tip of his finger, her teeth deliberately scraping his skin. It's so good, oh spirits, so good. They're usually silent in case any guards are lingering outside the door, but he can't hold back the groan that rises from his chest.

She pulls away, and the tip of his finger is too cold without her mouth, but then she slides a green strap off her shoulder, and his body begins to burn. The bright lights around her head have glowing halos; she is an ethereal creature, edges blurred by streaks of light. As he stares up at her, he wonders how he could have ever tried to hurt this spirit-woman. His heart is light with love.

The dress drops to the floor to reveal a black lace bra and matching panties. His mouth slackens; she usually comes to him with a practical chest wrap and undershorts. Her hands reach behind her back to undo the bra, but he catches her forearm.

"Wait."

She nods, her hands relaxing by her sides.

This is too much to wrap his head around: the free hand, her makeup, the underwear. He almost doesn't trust himself to stand, but even though the ground spins beneath him, his footing holds.

After a moment to take her in, he starts with her collarbone; it's strong and straight, and as his fingers dip into the groove above it, he can feel the cords where her muscles connect to the bone. He traces it across to her shoulder, marvelling at the sinew. The muscle leads him toward the upper arm, but he pulls his hand away. This is not a part of the body he likes to dwell upon.

Instead, he follows the line of her pectoral muscle down to the swell of the bra. He wants to feel what is beneath it, more than anything, but it has been so long since he felt lace that he allows himself to linger. It astounds him that something this delicate and feminine has such a harsh texture; it's coarse, almost chafing. The contradiction is so like the woman wearing it.

He wants to feel the lines of her abdomen, the soft kiss of her navel, the wiry curls between her legs, but it's been so many years since he last touched a breast that he decides to take his time. "Turn around," he says hoarsely.

She looks a little confused, but she complies, and he feels a rare surge of confidence. When he was a young, cocky man practicing this trick years ago, he had no idea how important it would become. He unhooks her bra with one hand, and delights in her yelp of surprise.

With an amused glance over her shoulder, she says, "I see you still have a few tricks up your sleeves." Her eyes widen at the choice of phrasing. "That's not what I meant."

The words did hit him wrong, but he's not going to let anything interrupt the growing warmth inside his body. He slides the straps off her shoulders, and the bra joins the dress on the floor. "Turn around," he says, with more confidence this time, as he lowers himself to a seat in his chair.

The orbs of her breasts bounce a little with her momentum, then settle into place. He knows these breasts well; he has traced them with his tongue, pulled them into his mouth, pressed his nose between them, but never felt them, not like this.

He just barely floats above them at first, delighting in the way the mixture of cold air and body heat makes her dark areolas shrink into tight ovals, goosebumps forming around their borders. The words, "So perfect," leave his lips before he realizes he's speaking, and he feels his cheeks flush, but when he chances a look up at her, she gives him a shy smile.

His thumb delicately touches her nipple. It feels softer against his thumb than it did against his tongue, and he depresses it and feels it spring back into place. Even though he believes it's courteous to explore the entirety of a woman, not reduce her to a single part, he has never quite outgrown his adolescent obsession with breasts, and he spends a few fascinated minutes exploring them. His palm falls into place around the base of her breast and he tests its weight, then squeezes it. It has always astounded him how a part of the body that looks so firm can be so malleable to the touch.

He wishes he could grab both of them at the same time, fingers curling into them with untamed passion. Instead, he brings his mouth to her unattended nipple, suckling it as he pinches the other, and he feels her breath leave her in a barely-audible gasp. His pants are painfully tight, and he knows that he's only about ten seconds from begging her to ride him. He may not have much dignity now, but he still prides himself on control, and there's more exploring he wants to do before he lets his desperation win out.

Pulling away from her breasts, his fingers trail down her stomach instead. He should really be reading her face, seeing what she wants him to do, but this is the first time since he has been imprisoned that he feels free, and surely that makes it all right to be selfish?

His fingertip finds her navel, and he hears her breath catch. He loves navels -- to a man from the Water Tribes, they're an intimate part of the body, always hidden from the world by necessity -- but he's aware that she finds the sensation uncomfortable, so he doesn't linger too long.

Now he has arrived at the other set of lace, and the roughness makes him grimace, but there is a patch of silk below it. He closes his eyes and traces the silk, so slick that it almost feels cold. Beneath it are curls of hair; he can just barely read them through the fabric. His fingers slide lower, to the cleft where the silk hugs her anatomy, and finds a damp patch that makes his world spin again. He wants to tear the fabric away and bury his face in that wet flesh, nuzzle his nose into the curls and breathe in her scent, but he will be patient.

He slowly runs a finger up and down the cleft, listening for the exact spot that makes her gasp change pitch. Once he finds it, he slowly circles. Above him, Korra starts to double over, her eyes closed and her mouth open. As he moves a little faster, her hands claw into his shoulders, and he feels that the damp patch has seeped all the way to his finger. His mind is light, his body is floating; he feels no more pain, no more doubts. There's just her soft puffs of air and his circling finger. He traces her name, one letter at a time, and her sharp gasp makes him giddy.

"Tarrlok," she whispers. "Tarrlok, please..." Her head is bowed now, and she's leaning her weight into his touch.

He planned to spend more time exploring her body than this. There's still so much he wanted to feel: those dimples where her lower back meets her ass, the barely-visible puckering on her thighs, the soft spackling of invisible fur on the top of her feet. Then a realization strikes him. This isn't the only time he will be able to do this; now that she can metal-bend, he can touch her any time he wants to. Euphoria erupts through his body, tingles through his limbs, into his fingers and toes until every bit of him is alight. This is a beginning, a new step together. In a lifetime that has been filled with almost nothing but endings, he finally, finally has a beginning.

"Take them off," he breathes.

She does, and he watches the soft hair spring into place, watches liquid string between her flesh and the fabric, and he has never felt so alive, never felt so much love. He nudges her back so that she rests against the table, then nuzzles between her legs, breathing her in. Oh spirits, that scent, it makes every cell in his body cry out for her. His fingers part the folds as he touches his tongue to her.

"Please," she gasps, and that gasp wasn't as quiet as it needed to be, but he is tingling too much to care if they are overheard. His finger slides into her, and even through the slickness, he can feel rough patches and smooth rings of muscle contracting, and there, at the end, the soft cervix that shies away when he strokes it.

It's odd that he has spent most of his adult life preoccupied with getting inside vaginas, but never stopped to explore their intricacies with his touch, not like this. The intimacy of it is dizzying: this is her, the part of her that connects them, the part of her that has both the power to give him pleasure, and the power to expand to deliver a child, if she chooses. She has allowed him in, and what's more, his presence is pleasing her. He feels like she is a goddess, and she has deemed him worthy. He feels like a god.

He slips in another finger and focuses on a curved, rough patch that makes her grind down on his hand. Liquid pools in his palm. His thoughts scatter. He sucks and licks and thrusts, and she covers her mouth to muffle her cries. The ache between his legs is so strong that he feels bruised, and his jaw muscles are beginning to twinge, but the pain feels good, it all feels so good.

Now he feels her muscles contracting around his fingers, and the hand that's still on his shoulder is digging in, and a squeak of a muffled scream escapes from her fingers. He feels himself rising with her.

Then they are soaring together as contractions ripple through her body.

The hand on his shoulder falls away. He chances a look up: her eyes are closed, her makeup streaked with sweat, her cheeks flushed. He knows he should remove his fingers -- she's always sensitive right after she comes -- but he wants to stay joined for a minute longer. He bends to give her vulva a parting kiss.

"So beautiful," he rumbles into her flesh, and Korra gives a soft, shy laugh. Her eyelids open, and he stares into the colour-streaked blue irises, the pupils large and soft now.

"Your turn," she murmurs.

He raises his brows. "Your party-"

"I came here early. We have time." She steps forward, still naked except for her high heels, and grips the bottom of his shirt.

As always, he tenses when she pulls the shirt over his head. The first few times they were together, her gaze did linger on his other arm, but she has since trained herself not to stare. Even so, the moment after his shirt has been removed is always when he feels most vulnerable.

Once his shirt is off, she leans forward to whisper in his ear, "You know, without the handcuffs, I can have you in any position I want." Her fingers flutter against his chest. "But after watching you touch me like that, I kind of want to spend some time touching you, too."

He turns his head to catch her lips for a soft kiss. "You get to touch me all the time."

There's an intake of breath as if she's about to speak, but then she hesitates. He pulls back to look at her, and finds her brows pinched.

"Korra?"

"There is one place I have never touched you," she says quietly.

"No." The word is reflex. The truth is that right now, his pain is so numb, his mind is so fogged, that he would let her do anything she wanted.

"I love all of you."

Love. The room is scrolling around him. He is spinning. He wants to say the word back, wants to surrender to her, but instead, he says, "How can you love all of me? I'm not whole."

"You're whole, Tarrlok."

It's a lie, such a lie. His skin begins to itch, and he shrinks against the back of his chair. The haze is falling away from his mind, and he is starting to remember all the reasons she shouldn't want to be with him.

With a frown, she grabs his wrist and plants his hand between her breasts. "Do you feel that?"

He does. The beat of her heart, fast and constant. He shuts his eyes to focus on it, and he can hear it drumming through him, can see it flashing green before his closed eyelids.

"Do you feel how fast it's beating?" she says. "That's what you do to me, Tarrlok. You, as you are now."

Maybe he's not as broken as he thinks. He considers how honoured he felt that she was sharing all of herself with him, just a few minutes ago, and realizes he is being selfish by keeping himself closed off.

"Okay," he says. "Touch me."

She smoothes hair off his forehead. "You're sure?"

He nods.

As she reaches for his shoulder, he tries not to shake. He has never felt this vulnerable, not even the first time he first took off his clothes in front of a girl. There were barriers to protect him: grooming, manners, fashion, cologne. Like his brother, he always hid behind a mask, just of a different sort. Even with Korra, he could at least prevent her from touching his arm; so long as she didn't touch it, it wasn't real.

Now, he has none of that to protect him. He is raw and exposed.

Her hand brushes against the shoulder, then trails down to the stump that used to lead to his arm. He holds his breath. He always hated his arms, hated that no matter how much he ate and exercised, they were too scrawny. What he wouldn't give to get that scrawny arm back.

But as he watches Korra's face, he sees no disgust, no judgement, not even pity. She's touching him exactly the way he just touched her: someone exploring another person for the first time, and that's all there is to it.

His throat tightens.

He wants to tell her that he still feels it, sometimes, the pain of flame and shrapnel shredding an arm that is no longer there. He wants to tell her that when he's with her, he doesn't feel the pain. He doesn't remember seeing Noatak going up in flames, doesn't feel the salt water filling his sinuses, or the terror of realizing he doesn't have waterbending to rescue him.

When he's with her, he feels whole. He is whole.

"I love you." The words slip out unexpectedly, but he doesn't feel the need to take them back.

She looks up at him, shocked, but then her face relaxes into a smile, and he feels himself mirroring it.

"Stand up," she whispers.

He obeys, and she surprises him with a hug so tight that his breath escapes with an "Oof." He kisses the top of her hair, but then gasps as she suddenly pulls his pants off his hips.

Before he can fully grasp what's going on, she kneels in front of him and takes him into her mouth. He's still so turned on from touching her that his entire body hums with electricity. Her fingers grip his testicles and tug, and he feels a shudder run through him. He's reeling from her touch and his confession, and the fast transition from hug to this has him dizzy.

"Korra..."

"Mmm?" she purrs, vibrating him. She takes him deep into her throat and presses her lips firmly into the base of the shaft. There's a red ring of lipstick around him when she pulls away. He stares at it with blurry eyes, feeling as if he's drifting away from his body.

His hand clamps her shoulder, and he tries not to beg: "I need you."

There's a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. Her tongue runs around the sensitive head, and his teeth clench.

"Now," he whispers urgently.

As her mouth breaks contact, a strand of moisture connects them for a moment longer, but then she licks her lips. She stands. "How do you want me?" Her fingers walk up his chest.

"On all fours." He has only focused on her front so far tonight; her back needs some attention as well.

With a hum of agreement, she begins to take off her shoes, but he shakes his head.

"Leave them on," he whispers.

She mock-frowns at him. "Someone's getting bossy." But she leaves them on and drops to her knees and hands on the floor in front of him.

He sinks to his knees behind her and fans his fingertips, then combs them down her back, tracing the groove of her spine with his middle finger. Her back arches even more, displaying her ass, and he grips one of the muscled cheeks, his thumb grazing her tailbone. It feels even better than he ever imagined. He would love to explore her back the way he explored her front, but that will have to wait for another day. His mind is so fogged with need for her that he's growing numb to subtleties.

He reaches down to part her lips, and slowly pushes into her.

Korra gasps, and he hears himself echo her as searing heat flushes through his body. Now that his fingers have been inside her, he's so much more aware of her anatomy, and he swears he can feel all those ridges and smooth spots and rings of muscle as he begins to thrust into her. His hand claps against her lower back and he uses it to pull her harder against him, aiding her counter-thrusts.

Their lovemaking until now has been careful and reserved, two former enemies tentatively dancing around any confusion that might occur if they showed too much passion. That has all been stripped away now, by the honesty of their words, by the touches they shared. For the first time, he discards all his inhibitions and fucks her with the joyous abandon of a man in love, and she meets him thrust for thrust.

"Grab my hair," she pants. She's balancing herself on her elbow, and he realizes she's using her other hand to touch herself.

He complies and wraps her hair around his hand, tugging hard enough to tilt her head back. She's already clenching around him; he can see the muscles of her back ripple with tension.

"I'm not going to last," he hears himself gasp, as if from far away. He is detaching, he's so much bigger than just Tarrlok, he's expanding to fill both of them, they're expanding to fill each other. I am whole. With her, I am whole.

"Harder," she cries, and he doesn't know if she means the thrusts or the tautness of her hair, so he does both.

His world is glowing white, he isn't going to be able to hold off, he isn't going to...

She yells, barely muffling herself in time, and the spasms of her muscles pull him over the edge. He pulls out and comes on her back, biting his cheek to stifle his cries.

For a moment, they don't move. Sweat drips off the end of his nose and onto her back, and he pants, trying to find his breath.

Then she falls onto her stomach, and he rolls to lie on his side beside her. The floor is cold marble and probably filthy, but he doesn't care; everything is right.

She smiles at him from underneath a curtain of frizzy hair. He returns her smile and lifts the hair off her face.

"Your makeup," he says, smoothing a streak of smudged lipstick from her chin.

"Worth it." Her eyes close. "Spirits, that was amazing."

He can't stop smiling, but his dizzying high is beginning to take a downturn. In a few minutes, they will be separated, and it will be days or weeks until he sees her again. He tries not to think about it, not yet, but it's already weighing him down. He wants to curl up next to her in the drowsy afterglow and let sleep settle over them.

Her eyes open again, this time rimmed with tears, and he knows she's having the same thoughts. He quickly sits up.

"I'm afraid there's a bit of a mess on your back." He can't stop himself from wrinkling his nose. He's never been a fan of the messier aspects of sex; they're arousing in context, but not once it's over.

"I smuggled some tissue inside my bra," she says. He drags himself over to the discarded clothing and finds her bra, retrieving the tissue. Dutifully, he cleans her up; it was his mess, after all, so he shouldn't complain.

Once that's done, they both dress in silence. He helps her adjust the straps of her dress to cover the bra straps, then finger-combs her hair back into place. She'll need a touch-up on her makeup, but otherwise she looks every bit as radiant as when she walked in the door. Even more so, with her sparkling eyes and swollen lips.

"Well," she says, half-flapping her arms in the first display of shyness he has seen since this whole affair began.

He's done with shyness; they are more than that now. His hand grips her jaw and he pulls her in for a long kiss, memorizing the way her mouth tastes, the way her body folds against his. This memory will sustain him until they meet again -- it's not quite enough, but it will have to do.

Then he sits in the chair, and she bends the handcuff back around his wrist. Her thumb wipes the lipstick from his lips.

As her hand falls away, their eyes lock.

"Let's meet again soon," he says quietly, because it's easier than trying to express the array of emotions buzzing through him.

With a nod, she swallows hard, then turns and leaves the room.

Every bit of heat from the room leaves with her. Tarrlok shrivels against the chair, shivering, as he waits to be taken back to his cell.


End file.
